Jesse Jackson, Jr. 1965–

Jesse Louis Jackson, Jr. is one of the youngest members of Congress and the oldest son of civil rights activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Smart, savvy, and ambitious, he won his seat in a special election on December 12, 1995, beating out party favorites by dint of sheer hard work and family charisma. He is acutely aware of his father’s international reputation, and, while fiercely proud of it, is equally determined to make his own mark on the world. When he was sworn in as the Representative for Illinois’s Second Congressional District, his father told the Boston Globe, “He’s been preparing for this all his life.”

On March 11, 1965, father and son—now so close that they share an almost physical connection—began their life together hundreds of miles apart. Jesse Sr. had left the family home in Greenville, South Carolina, to join Martin Luther King, Jr. on his famous voting rights march to Selma, Alabama. While he was gone, his wife Jacqueline gave birth to their second child and first son. She named the boy after his father. Jesse, whom everyone from kin to constituents calls simply “Junior,” learned later that his father had wanted to call him “Selma” in honor of the historic events that had taken place during his birth and to spare him the difficulties of being his namesake.

Jackson and his older sister Santita were joined later by three more siblings: Jonathan, Yusef, and Jacqueline. Their parents ruled with iron hands and loving hearts: no friends after school, no prime-time television, no loud music. “Around Jackie’s and Jesse’s…house, there was no freedom of speech,” Jackson recalled in the Chicago Tribune. “There was discipline: speak when spoken to. And…we are not wearing dentures today [because] we followed that principle.” Jackson, apparently, needed all that and more. Willie Barrow, now one of his advisors and a former People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH) president, told the Chicago Tribune, “We used to call him ’Fellow.’ He got the name because when he was a child, he was like a terrible little fellow.” Musician Quincy Jones, a PUSH board member, seconded the opinion, telling Jesse, “You were the baddest little kid I have ever seen.”

They were not joking. Tests soon showed that Jackson was hyperactive, aggressive, and very intelligent. His parents decided to send him and his brother Jonathan to Le Mans Academy, a private military school. “I felt they needed a regimented form of discipline,” said Mrs. Jackson in Chicago magazine. Their father, conscious of his constant presence in the media, wanted “an environment free of my being on the radio and TV every day, but one that was close enough for them to be home for the holidays and give them some space for independent development.”

Jackson flourished at Le Mans and went on to the elite St. Albans Episcopal prep school. There he proved himself to be both a good student and a gifted athlete. He became a leader of the debate team and earned a formidable reputation as a running back, gaining 1,000 yards and thirteen touchdowns during his final year.

Upon graduation from high school, Jackson received scholarship offers from such football powerhouses as

the University of Michigan, Notre Dame, and the University of Southern California. He turned them all down, however, to attend his father’s alma mater, predominantly-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, where he majored in business. Like his father before him—a quarterback—he played for the school’s football team, but quit in his sophomore year to concentrate on academic pursuits.

Distance from home did not mean estrangement from his family. During the years that he was away from home to attend school, Jackson’s parents continued to influence his life. As a teenager he traveled with his father when he negotiated several high-profile hostage-rescue situations. As he matured, he told the Christian Science Monitor, he realized that “Dad wasn’t someone I should just be casually comfortable with, but one I should also respect as a champion for social justice.”

Despite his father’s enormous fame, Jackson never felt pressured to join his myriad social causes. He said his parents always encouraged him to choose his own path and make his own decisions. The family business obviously exerted a powerful influence on him, nonetheless. He finished his bachelor’s degree in three years, in part to work on his father’s presidential campaign. Immediately after the campaign ended, he entered graduate study at the Chicago Theological Seminary, the same school that had awarded Jesse Sr. his divinity degree. Still not content, he earned a JD degree at the University of Illinois, although he has never practiced law.

While still in graduate school, Jesse and the other Jackson children were asked to introduce Jesse Sr. before his speech to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Jesse, Jr. was the last to speak, and his words were so electrifying, reminisced his friend Rhoda McKinley in the Chicago Tribune, that “he brought the house down.” From this auspicious start he began a career in public speaking that continued through his years as a graduate student. Not surprisingly, Jackson kept one foot firmly in his father’s camp while honing his own considerable ambitions. During law school he frequently campaigned for his dad and other Democratic candidates as well as working the lecture circuit on his own, earning between $2,500 and $7,500 for each engagement. In 1994 alone, his appearance fees totaled almost $55,000, and by 1996, he had amassed approximately $515,000. “I have been very prudent. I saved my money,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

Jackson married his wife Sandra in 1991, four years after being introduced to her at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting. She worked for the Dukakis campaign and Congressman Cleo Fields but moved to Chicago after getting married to attend law school with her husband. Their relationship, she told Ebony magazine, is based on friendship: “My husband is a true people person. And he’s one of the most sincere people I’ve ever met. We’re great friends, and that has helped us through everything.”

In 1993 Jackson became national field director for the Rainbow Coalition, a political action group founded by his father. He quickly restructured and modernized. He computerized many of the operations and trained staff to use the new equipment, established an Internet site, began a weekly faxed newsletter called “JaxFax,” and codified his reorganization in a 200-page manual. He also helped establish new local chapters of Operation PUSH and campaigned for congressional candidates John Conyers and Maxine Waters, both political allies of his father. The new job garnered him so many contacts that he was able to cover his office walls with photographs of himself with presidents, world leaders, and other politicians.

Despite his education, political connections, and demand as a public speaker, however, criticism began to swirl around Jackson. Some detractors claimed that his success depended entirely on his father’s success. In a Boston Globe interview, he shrugged, “This is the only reality that I know.” He admitted admiring his charismatic father, saying: “I seek his advice, his counsel, his prayers, his wisdom.”

Jackson began to consider a run for political office in 1994. He bought a house on Chicago’s south side in
the Second Congressional District. Jackson’s relocation led the Chicago Tribune to speculate that he intended to challenge Reynolds, the districts representative in Congress. Quite willing to fan the flames, Jackson defended his qualifications for the post to the paper: “My friends are in Congress—Rep. Cleo Fields. And Joe Kennedy, at 26, is a congressman from Rhode Island. He hasn’t been on as many presidential campaigns and doesn’t know as many people as I know.” Jackson also pulled together a cadre of senior and influential political advisors, a caliber of help unavailable to most candidates considering a first-time run for office.

Reynolds lost his seat after he was convicted and jailed in connection with a scandalous relationship with a minor and financial transgressions. Jackson made his move, quitting his job at the Rainbow Coalition. He organized an emotional ceremony at the Salem Baptist Church on September 9, 1995. After more than an hour of buildup that included an introduction by his father, Jackson finally declared his candidacy. As quoted in the Chicago Tribune, he urged his listeners to “transform our district and our nation by the renewal of our minds.”

In the Democratic primary, Jackson faced the heavily favored state Senate leader Emil Jones, who had the support of the Chicago political machine behind him. Voters seemed willing to take a chance on Jackson’s famous name, however, something he worked hard to foster. His use of computers and electronics allowed him to reach the target audience of 18-to 40-year-old voters, considered most likely to be receptive to his themes of “A New Generation” and economic improvement for the district. Co-campaign manager Frank Watkins told the Chicago Tribune, “We ran a street campaign—meaning traditional methods of getting out and meeting the people—but we also ran an ultramodern technological campaign.” The Jones camp reluctantly agreed. “It’s like running against a Kennedy in Massachusetts,” complained an aide.

After his primary victory, Jackson’s otherwise smooth operation hit a snag. The Chicago Tribune revealed that the last two years of his salary at the Rainbow Coalition had been paid by the Chicago-based Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union. The scandal-plagued union was being investigated by the government for alleged links to organized crime. Jackson retorted that the payment was appropriate since part of his job at the coalition was to act as a union organizer: “I organized at hotels, I organized at picket lines around this country, organized workers and fought to raise the minimum wage.” When pressed for precise dates for such activities or even for the union president’s name, Jackson stood mute. He claimed ignorance of the union’s alleged mob ties although such connections were well established and highly publicized. Even if the stories were true, he insisted, the money had allowed him to help working people, and that justified his acceptance of it.

Jackson also ruffled some feathers when he accepted support from a former gang member, Wallace “Gator” Bradley, an associate of convicted murderer Larry Hoover. The Jackson-headed Operation PUSH had advocated parol for Hoover in 1993, insisting to the Chicago Tribune that he was a “model citizen.” Hoover and others later were indicted for using a political group, 21st Century Voices of Total Empowerment (VOTE), to launder money from drug rings and other illegal businesses on the south side of Chicago. When questioned about this, Jackson said “without equivocation that I denounce illegal gang activity, I denounce violence and illegal activity of any kind,” but he refused to reject support from Bradley.

The accusations did not seem to hurt his standing in the polls, however, and his support of issues popular with his heavily Democratic constituents—government-sponsored health care, more federal money for education, strong support for affirmative action, and a third Chicago airport to bring jobs to the economically depressed area—kept him in front. His well-endowed war chest, funded with donations from such celebrities as Johnnie Cochran, Bill Cosby, and New York mayor David Dinkins, was another major asset.

Jackson won a resounding victory in the December 12 general election with 76 percent of the vote. Celebrating his victory, he told the New York Times:“We want the people to dream again. We want them to believe again.” He told the Chicago Tribune that he hoped newspapers would one day run headlines announcing “Motorola, Sears, Amoco, GE build plants on the South Side.” On the national scale, he said, “We have sought to challenge the Democratic Party and the nation since 1984 to honor Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s tradition, to be more inclusive, to fight for healthy conditions for workers and good benefits, to fight for racial justice and gender equity as the moral center.”

Jackson was sworn in three days later by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with his family in attendance. After the brief ceremony, he addressed other members of the House: “I am honored to be a servant of this body,” quoted the New York Times. “Together we must make the American dream possible for all Americans.”Ebony magazine quoted Jackson’s wish to be a “freedom fighter in the character and best tradition of Jesus Christ, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Nelson Mandela, and my dad, Jesse Jackson Sr.” He received a standing ovation. In accord with his wishes, Representatives John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan and Kweisi Mfume of Maryland lobbied for Jackson’s presence on the influential Ways and Means Committee—where most tax laws are drafted—or the Transportation Committee.
Jackson found himself instead on the Banking and Financial Services Committee.

Despite the less-than-prestigious committee seat, Jackson knew what he wanted to accomplish in Congress. He intended to remove Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, claiming in USA Today, “There is no greater priority.” He also hoped to kick off a national initiative to register young voters, a tactic that many considered key to his own victory. In addition, he told the Chicago Tribune, “I’m trying to build an airport that will bring 236,000 jobs to our region.” He also planned to defend challenges to court-drawn minority voting districts and opposed any decrease in the rate of Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Because he was elected only to finish the remainder of Reynolds’s term, Jackson faced new primary and general election challenges very shortly after taking office. As expected, however, he easily won reelection. His successful campaigns as a political novice, albeit a well-connected one, earned him considerable respect. After less than a year in office, he had received 36 requests to make campaign appearances for fellow Democrats. “He’s in unbelievable demand,” Frank Watkins, now Jackson’s communications director, told U.S. News and World Report.

Jackson knows that the shared name will always link him to his father, and he is not only comfortable with the notion, he takes pride in it. “It’s a name that’s synonymous with public service, with helping people, and I’ve always striven to live up to that commitment,” he told the Boston Globe. “But,” he said, “it’s also a double-edged sword. You inherit your father’s friends, your parents’ friends, and you inherit their detractors.” Jackson intends to succeed on his own, however. “I’m having a study done,” he told Chicago magazine. “I want to know what the most successful freshmen have accomplished in their first term. So when the media says that Jesse Jackson Junior hasn’t done anything, I can hold up this study and say, “’I bested the best.’”

Since entering politics, Jackson has worked hard to nurture good faith in his own name. In 1999 he introduced the HOPE for Africa Act to open the U.S. economy to African countries and nurture strong, fair trade relations between the countries. In addition to trade bills, Jackson introduced several bills over the years that have addressed disparities in healthcare, environmental degradation, responsible fatherhood, and an end to the death penalty, among other things. While concentrating on issues of equality, Jackson proposed bills to amend the constitution. Chief among his concerns were the right of Americans to vote, the right to education of equal quality and health care of equal quality. Jackson argued that leaving these issues within the purview of the states has created systems of widely varying quality. Popular among his constituents, Jackson’s future in politics seemed to be just starting by the turn of the century.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. 1965–

Jesse Louis Jackson, Jr. is one of the youngest members of Congress and the oldest son of civil rights activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Smart, savvy, and ambitious, he won his seat in a special election on December 12, 1995, beating out party favorites by dint of sheer hard work and family charisma. He is acutely aware of his father’s international reputation, and, while fiercely proud of it, is equally determined to make his own mark on the world. When he was sworn in as the Representative for Illinois’s Second Congressional District, his father told the Boston Globe, “He’s been preparing for this all his life.”

On March 11, 1965, father and son-now so close that they share an almost physical connection--began their life together hundreds of miles apart. Jesse Sr. had left the family home in Greenville, South Carolina, to join Martin Luther King, Jr. on his famous voting rights march to Selma, Alabama. While he was gone, his wife Jacqueline gave birth to their second child and first son. She named the boy after his father. Jesse, whom everyone from kin to constituents calls simply “Junior,” learned later that his father had wanted to call him “Selma” in honor of the historic events that had taken place during his birth and to spare him the difficulties of being his name-sake.

Jackson and his older sister Santita were joined later by three more siblings: Jonathan, Yusef, and Jacqueline. Their parents ruled with iron hands and loving hearts: no friends after school, no prime-time television, no loud music. “Around Jackie’s and Jesse’s … house, there was no freedom of speech,” Jackson recalled in the Chicago Tribune. “There was discipline: speak when spoken to. And . . . we are not wearing dentures today [because] we followed that principle.” Jackson, apparently, needed all that and more. Willie Barrow, now one of his advisors and a former People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH) president, told the Chicago Tribune, “We used to call him ’ Fellow.’ He got the name because when he was a child, he was like a terrible little fellow.” Musician Quincy Jones, a PUSH board member, seconded the opinion, telling Jesse, “You were the baddest little kid I have ever seen.”

Field director for the Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH 1993-95; elected to represent the second congressional district of Illinois in the 104th Congress on December 12, 1995; appointed to the committee on banking and financial services; won reelection in general election, 1996.

They were not joking. Tests soon showed that Jackson was hyperactive, aggressive, and very intelligent. His parents decided to send him and his brother Jonathan to Le Mans Academy, a private military school. “I felt they needed a regimented form of discipline,” said Mrs. Jackson in Chicago magazine. Their father, conscious of his constant presence in the media, wanted “an environment free of my being on the radio and TV every day, but one that was close enough for them to be home for the holidays and give them some space for independent development.”

Jackson flourished at Le Mans and went on to the elite St. Albans Episcopal prep school. There he proved himself to be both a good student and a gifted athlete. He became a leader of the debate team and earned a formidable reputation as a running back, gaining 1,000 yards and thirteen touchdowns during his final year.

Upon graduation from high school, Jackson received scholarship offers from such football powerhouses as the University of Michigan, Notre Dame, and the University of Southern California. He turned them all down, however, to attend his father’s alma mater, predominantly-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, where he majored in business. Like his father before him--a quarterback--he played for the school’s football team, but quit in his sophomore year to concentrate on academic pursuits.

Distance from home did not mean estrangement from his family. During the years that he was away from home to attend school, Jackson’s parents continued to influence his life. As a teenager he traveled with his father when he negotiated several high-profile hostage-rescue situations. As he matured, he told the Christian Science Monitor, he realized that “Dad wasn’ t someone I should just be casually comfortable with, but one I should also respect as a champion for social justice.”

Despite his father’s enormous fame, Jackson never felt pressured to join his myriad social causes. He said his parents always encouraged him to choose his own path and make his own decisions. The family business obviously exerted a powerful influence on him, nonetheless. He finished his bachelor’s degree in three years, in part to work on his father’s presidential campaign. Immediately after the campaign ended, he entered graduate study at the Chicago Theological Seminary, the same school that had awarded Jesse Sr. his divinity degree. Still not content, he earned a J.D. degree at the University of Illinois, although he has never practiced law.

While still in graduate school, Jesse and the other Jackson children were asked to introduce Jesse Sr. before his speech to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Jesse, Jr. was the last to speak, and his words were so electrifying, reminisced his friend Rhoda McKinley in the Chicago Tribune, that “he brought the house down.” From this auspicious start he began a career in public speaking that continued through his years as a graduate student. Not surprisingly, Jackson kept one foot firmly in his father’s camp while honing his own considerable ambitions. During law school he frequently campaigned for his dad and other Democratic candidates as well as working the lecture circuit on his own, earning between $2,500 and $7,500 for each engagement. In 1994 alone, his appearance fees totaled almost $55,000, and by 1996, he had amassed approximately $515,000. “I have been very prudent. I saved my money,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

Jackson married his wife Sandra in 1991, four years after being introduced to her at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting. She worked for the Dukakis campaign and Congressman Cleo Fields but moved to Chicago after getting married to attend law school with her husband. Their relationship, she told Ebony magazine, is based on friendship: “My husband is a true people person. And he’s one of the most sincere people I’ ve ever met. We’ re great friends, and that has helped us through everything.”

In 1993 Jackson became national field director for the Rainbow Coalition, a political action group founded by his father. He quickly restructured and modernized. He computerized many of the operations and trained staff to use the new equipment, established an Internet site, began a weekly faxed newsletter called “JaxFax,” and codified his reorganization in a 200-page manual. He also helped establish new local chapters of Operation PUSH and campaigned for congressional candidates John Conyers and Maxine Waters, both political allies of his father. The new job garnered him so many contacts that he was able to cover his office walls with photographs of himself with presidents, world leaders, and other politicians.

Despite his education, political connections, and demand as a public speaker, however, criticism began to swirl around Jackson. Some detractors claimed that his success depended entirely on his father’s success. In a Boston Globe interview, he shrugged, “This is the only reality that I know.” He admitted admiring his charismatic father, saying: “I seek his advice, his counsel, his prayers, his wisdom.”

Jackson began to consider a run for political office in 1994. He bought a house on Chicago’s south side in the Second Congressional District. Jackson’s relocation led the Chicago Tribune to speculate that he intended to challenge Reynolds, the districts representative in Congress. Quite willing to fan the flames, Jackson defended his qualifications for the post to the paper: “My friends are in Congress--Rep. Cleo Fields. And Joe Kennedy, at 26, is a congressman from Rhode Island. He hasn’ t been on as many presidential campaigns and doesn’ t know as many people as I know.” Jackson also pulled together a cadre of senior and influential political advisors--a caliber of help unavailable to most candidates considering a first-time run for office.

Reynolds lost his seat after he was convicted and jailed in connection with a scandalous relationship with a minor and financial transgressions. Jackson made his move, quitting his job at the Rainbow Coalition. He organized an emotional ceremony at the Salem Baptist Church on September 9, 1995. After more than an hour of buildup that included an introduction by his father, Jackson finally declared his candidacy. As quoted in the Chicago Tribune, he urged his listeners to “transform our district and our nation by the renewal of our minds.”

In the Democratic primary, Jackson faced the heavily-favored state Senate leader Emil Jones, who had the support of the Chicago political machine behind him. Voters seemed willing to take a chance on Jackson’s famous name, however, something he worked hard to foster. His use of computers and electronics allowed him to reach the target audience of 18- to 40-year-old voters, considered most likely to be receptive to his themes of “A New Generation” and economic improvement for the district. Co-campaign manager Frank Watkins told the Chicago Tribune, “We ran a street campaign--meaning traditional methods of getting out and meeting the people--but we also ran an ultramodern technological campaign.” The Jones camp reluctantly agreed. “It’s like running against a Kennedy in Massachusetts,” complained an aide.

After his primary victory, Jackson’s otherwise smooth operation hit a snag. The Chicago Tribune revealed that the last two years of his salary at the Rainbow Coalition had been paid by the Chicago-based Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union. The scandal-plagued union was being investigated by the government for alleged links to organized crime. Jackson retorted that the payment was appropriate since part of his job at the coalition was to act as a union organizer: “I organized at hotels, I organized at picket lines around this country, organized workers and fought to raise the minimum wage.” When pressed for precise dates for such activities or even for the union president’s name, Jackson stood mute. He claimed ignorance of the union’s alleged mob ties although such connections were well established and highly publicized. Even if the stories were true, he insisted, the money had allowed him to help working people, and that justified his acceptance of it.

Jackson also ruffled some feathers when he accepted support from a former gang member, Wallace “Gator” Bradley, an associate of convicted murderer Larry Hoover. The Jackson-headed Operation PUSH had advocated parol for Hoover in 1993, insisting to the Chicago Tribune that he was a “model citizen.” Hoover and others later were indicted for using a political group, 21st Century Voices of Total Empowerment (VOTE), to launder money from drug rings and other illegal businesses on the south side of Chicago. When questioned about this, Jackson said “without equivocation that I denounce illegal gang activity, I denounce violence and illegal activity of any kind,” but he refused to reject support from Bradley.

The accusations did not seem to hurt his standing in the polls, however, and his support of issues popular with his heavily Democratic constituents--government-sponsored health care, more federal money for education, strong support for affirmative action, and a third Chicago airport to bring jobs to the economically depressed area--kept him in front. His well-endowed war chest, funded with donations from such celebrities as Johnnie Cochran, Bill Cosby, and New York mayor David Dinkins, was another major asset.

Jackson won a resounding victory in the December 12 general election with 76 percent of the vote. Celebrating his victory, he told the New York Times : “We want the people to dream again. We want them to believe again.” He told the Chicago Tribune that he hoped newspapers would one day run headlines announcing “Motorola, Sears, Amoco, GE build plants on the South Side.” On the national scale, he said, “We have sought to challenge the Democratic Party and the nation since 1984 to honor Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s tradition, to be more inclusive, to fight for healthy conditions for workers and good benefits, to fight for racial justice and gender equity as the moral center.”

Jackson was sworn in three days later by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with his family in attendance. After the brief ceremony, he addressed other members of the House: “I am honored to be a servant of this body,” quoted the New York Times. “Together we must make the American dream possible for all Americans.”Ebony magazine quoted Jackson’s wish to be a “freedom fighter in the character and best tradition of Jesus Christ, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Nelson Mandela, and my dad, Jesse Jackson Sr.” He received a standing ovation. In accord with his wishes, Representatives John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan and Kweisi Mfume of Maryland lobbied for Jackson’s presence on the influential Ways and Means Committee--where most tax laws are drafted--or the Transportation Committee. Jackson found himself instead on the Banking and Financial Services Committee.

Despite the less-than-prestigious committee seat, Jackson knew what he wanted to accomplish in Congress. He intended to remove Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, claiming in USA Today, “There is no greater priority.” He also hoped to kick off a national initiative to register young voters, a tactic that many considered key to his own victory. In addition, he told the Chicago Tribune, “I’ m trying to build an airport that will bring 236,000 jobs to our region.” He also planned to defend challenges to court-drawn minority voting districts and opposed any decrease in the rate of Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Because he was elected only to finish the remainder of Reynolds’s term, Jackson faced new primary and general election challenges very shortly after taking office. As expected, however, he easily won reelection. His successful campaigns as a political novice, albeit a well-connected one, earned him considerable respect. After less than a year in office, he had received 36 requests to make campaign appearances for fellow Democrats. “He’s in unbelievable demand,” Frank Watkins, now Jackson’s communications director, told US News and World Report.

Jackson knows that the shared name will always link him to his father, and he is not only comfortable with the notion, he takes pride in it. “It’s a name that’s synonymous with public service, with helping people, and I’ ve always striven to live up to that commitment,” he told the Boston Globe. “But,” he said, “it’s also a double-edged sword. You inherit your father’s friends, your parents’ friends, and you inherit their detractors.” Jackson intends to succeed on his own, however. “I’ m having a study done,” he told Chicago magazine. “I want to know what the most successful freshmen have accomplished in their first term. So when the media says that Jesse Jackson Junior hasn’ t done anything, I can hold up this study and say, ’ I bested the best.’”